WASHINGTON  On Sunday, June 25, 1950, the Korean People's Army attacked across the 38th parallel, captured Seoul  capital of the Republic of Korea  and began driving south. The battered South Korean army and their U.S. military advisers quickly were pushed into the "Pusan Perimeter" on the southern tip of the peninsula  and U.S. President Harry Truman took the case to the United Nations Security Council.

American leadership and the absence of the Soviet ambassador resulted in swift passage of Security Council Resolution 84. The measure  perhaps the last time in history that the U.N. acted with dispatch  authorized the use of force against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. During the bloody three-year war that followed, troops from 10 European countries and from 10 others around the world fought beside U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Korea  finally securing an armistice July 27, 1953.

In the years since, the increasingly isolated patriarchal-Stalinist regime in Pyongyang, North Korea, has raised visceral hatred of the United States to a whole new level while systematically violating the terms of the armistice  and virtually every other agreement to which it is a party. In short, Pyongyang's past behavior is a prelude to present and future conduct.

On Jan. 21, 1968, North Korean guerrillas attacked Seoul's Presidential Palace in an attempt to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson dispatched Cyrus Vance to discourage the South Koreans  with troops already committed in Vietnam  from undertaking a military response. Vance's mission was a success, and no action  other than a strongly worded diplomatic note  was taken against Pyongyang.

Two days later, the USS Pueblo, a small, unarmed U.S. Navy surveillance vessel, was seized in international waters by North Korean patrol...

I've just finished reading Escape from Camp 14, by Blaine Hardin, an absolutely amazing and totally moving book about how millions of North Koreans are being treated in gulag prison camps throughout N. Korea today and every day. To see that fat-a$$ so-called president of N.Korea prance about with his binoculars makes me sick.

It's probably one of the most moving books I've ever read, and I've read many books.

The film is based on a true story of a group of 71 undertrained and undergunned student-soldiers of South Korea during the Korean War, who were mostly killed on August 11, 1950, during the Battle of Pohang-dong. For 11 hours, they defended Pohang-dong girls middle school, a strategic point for safeguarding the Nakdong River, from an attack by overwhelming North Korean forces.

These 71 teenagers, most of whom had never shot a gun before, managed to hold out against the advancing North Korean army for 11 hours. Their heroic defense of the area was actually a turning point in the Korean War. 71: Into the Fire tells the story of these student-soldiers over the course of that fateful day.

Oh Jang-beom is forced into becoming the leader of the student-soldier unit, simply because he is one of only three of the students who has combat experience (his combat experience was ammunition running between stations - not actual fighting). The rest of the student-soldiers have not even fired a weapon - thats how little training these young men had. This lack of experience and training makes the story even more amazing and inspiring.

100,000 South Korean students volunteered to fight in the war. This film was made as a commemoration of their sacrifices and was released during the 60th anniversary of the Korean War.

To those of you who really care, there's an expandable topo map of Korea that's worth studying. Like Lt. Col. North said:

"Official Washington's response to this new round of North Korean saber rattling has exacerbated anxiety in Seoul, Tokyo and U.S. Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii. Last week, the Obama administration launched a rhetorical counterattack against Pyongyang and widely publicized the deployment of strike aircraft, U.S. Navy surface combatants and ballistic missile defense assets 

including two sea-based radar platforms and ground-based missile interceptors to Guam.

One senior military officer put it this way:

"All this should have been done very quietly and reassured our allies. Instead, the Obama administration is turning this into their version of John Kennedy's 'Seven Days in May.'If they keep this up, everyone out here will have nukes."

Well put. The folks who canceled White House tours to save money need to get out their history books. The first occupant of the White House to receive a Nobel Prize was famous for saying,

"Speak softly, and carry a big stick." "

South Korea SHOULD be angry at the ILLEGAL ALIEN IN CHIEF. There's at least 4 million or more people in Seoul alone, that will be the first to feel the fire, if things go bad. When my last tour in Osan AB was over in 1995, they were worried about two renegade generals in North Korea that wanted to start the battle and get North Korea's loss over with, so the people of North Korea could get out from under the dictatorship, and begin to rebuild. South Korea was worried about having to support all those starving people in North Korea when North Korea collapses.

There's no good way to handle this. A lot of people are going to die. But if we must handle it, then do a preemptive strike, a very LARGE preemptive strike, and tactical nukes will have to be used at the very start. If we're going to do it, then do it right, and don't try to play small skirmishes and get more people killed. We know where the North Korean Leaders live and sleep, so destroy them first.

The United Nations had only been in existance a few years. Established in the wake of World War II, those who had lived through the long years of Axis and Turkist domination had a more clear vision of peace and the threats of those who invade their neighbors.

By the time the politics of the Korean War had played out, the UN was hostage to the forces of a Soviet Bloc, and the American sphere of influence across the Pacific and Atlantic. It was only a few more years before countries would figure out that their votes were worth huge financial aid.

At the point entire countries could sell a vote for foreign aid, they became doomed to the very same political forces that are now playing out in America as entire states vote in national elections for the best handouts....

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